Sputnik
by Sophie Anderson
Summary: Our duo struggles with letting go, of each other and of their son, despite the need.  Assume "I Want to Believe" never filmed.


**Sputnik**

Summary: Assume that 'I Want to Believe' never filmed. Our duo struggles with letting go, of each other and of their son, despite the need.

Notes: My big mouth couldn't keep this little finished nugget unpublished. :) Enjoy while you can.

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**SPUTNIK**

Every mile he drove was another mile away from where he wanted to be.

By day he put his foot on the gas and the brake, the gas and the brake. By night he shivered under thin motel blankets or sweltered under sweaty motel sheets.

The motels took him back to another time, when he was a different man and the world was a different place - and the small mundane noises coming through the spit-and-toilet-paper walls were made by a different person. Sometimes the urge to get up and check was overwhelming and he would stand half-naked in the moonlight or the dirty dawn, his feet chilling and his fists itching to knock on a stranger's door.

Ahead of him was gas and brake and stop and go. Behind him was a conveyor belt along which life moved on without him. She moved on without him. She said she wouldn't but he knew it was inevitable. Every minute was an hour, every hour was a day, every day was a week for him; but her life was moving at another pace - a normal pace. It was what they wanted; what they agreed; what they knew was safe - and he hated them both for being right and choosing wisely.

He heard voices. A voice. Twice. He didn't recognize the voice but he knew who it was. It pulled him as the moon sucks at the sea, and once he found his gas and brake had led him to a dirt road overlooking a hick town in a far place where he'd never been before. He sat and listened to the warm engine ticking as he stared down at the dusty clapboard homes and the tired stores - and wept and shook as he fought the compulsion to drive down the hill and mark his own flesh and blood for death.

He should leave. He knew he should leave. Get on a plane, a ship, and disappear. India. Europe. Australia. Innsbruck, De Aar, Pash-tali. He looked at maps and stuck mental pins in remote, anonymous places, but he knew he'd never go. He had to stay connected by the earth under his feet. He was not where he wanted to be but at least here he was on the same piece of land as where he wanted to be.

It comforted him to know that despite the miles between them, whether he was in Juneau, Alaska or Cape Horn at the southernmost tip of two continents - if he absolutely had to, he could walk back to her.

XXX

The Sunday New York Times was a hard paper to track down in Enterprise, Alabama.

The man who used to be Fox Mulder had noticed the signpost off Highway 84 and swung off with a tight little smile. This was the extent of his pleasure nowadays - gas and brake until he saw the name of a town that amused, confused or bemused him, and then indicating right.

He found the newspaper in the ramshackle library, together with a Manhattan ex-patriot who fell on his accent like he'd been sent to rescue the guy from the Moon. The man - who'd made the mistake of marrying a southern belle - introduced himself and shook his hand, then showed him the newspaper as if presenting the Rosetta stone. He hovered - increasingly confused and disappointed - as Mulder ignored another week's worth of reality and turned to the small ads.

Mulder scanned quickly but carefully - knowing what he was looking for but also knowing it was a long shot, just as it had been every week for seven months now.

And then his heart lurched.

There it was.

It was there.

He wanted to shout and punch the air in triumph, to dance a jig, to kiss the librarian. Instead he closed the newspaper, thanked the man, gave a short laugh at his forlorn attempt to bond - 'Go Nets!' - and swung a squealing U-turn that made the ugly, boring rental into a sacred vessel for carrying him home.

XXX

Home was wherever Scully was. And right now that was Bryant, South Dakota. Population 1012. Someone had hung a banner made from half a sheet below the sign to declare that 1013 was due on August 25th. A feed store, a diner, an unexpected movie theatre the width of a station wagon, and another feed store.

Mulder got there early. Two days early to be precise, but he'd been a lot earlier. In San Francisco he'd sat in a bar for four days, fending off alcoholism and offers of drinks from men who stood too close, before she arrived. He didn't care; she had a life to work around.

In Bryant he slept in the car, then sat in the diner or went to the movies in the land that time forgot. The diner served enough food to last him all day on a single $6 breakfast plate, while the theatre ran a scratched and juddering Terminator on a loop for an audience of one. Every time the metal Terminator rose from the flames at the end of the film, Mulder shivered and tasted this morning's eggs in his mouth again.

He shaved his beard and watched himself emerge in the restroom mirror as if from hibernation - older, thinner. Wearier.

He was on the sidewalk debating a foray to the feed store, just for the change of scenery, when Scully arrived. He saw her pull into a space outside the diner and couldn't move. His heart was in the way. She got out of the car and mounted the few steps and Mulder heard the now-familiar creak of the swing door from 50 yards away. He waited until he was sure he could cross the road without drawing attention to himself by running or whooping, then went to meet her.

Scully saw him as she was ordering lunch and the waitress - Layla - looked suddenly concerned about why just ordering the corn chowder had made a customer's eyes fill with tears. Then she saw Mulder and withdrew graciously.

Scully didn't get up. She didn't throw herself into his arms and he didn't expect her to. Even here they were careful, even here, she'd chosen a booth in the cool darkness instead of a table in the window, even here she was facing the door and with her back to the wall. He sat down and put his hand over hers and gave a shaky smile of greeting. Later he would greet her again - somewhere more private - but until then, they were careful.

'Hi,' he said.

'Hi,' she said.

And then they were silent until her chowder arrived and he ordered another one. It was just for show - his stomach was too tight to eat anything. Instead his eyes devoured her, drank her in like water in a desert, sucking up every last drop of her face, her hair, her small hands, her slim wrists, her flushed throat, her breasts under the pale blue blouse. 'I like this blouse,' he'd told her last time, as he unbuttoned it with his teeth. She'd remembered. His gaze and his memory lingered - and the flush rose up her throat to her cheeks as she joined him there.

'Is everything okay?' asked Layla, eyeing the untouched food.

'Everything's fine thank you,' he said without looking at her.

XXX

They drove 20 miles to the nearest motel. Swinging into the lot made his throat ache with memories, and she bit her bottom lip.

They were given the key to room number 42 which made him nudge her like a schoolboy while she mouthed 'Spooky' under her breath. It lightened the mood, so that when they finally closed the door on the world, they fell onto the bed with a mixture of lust and laughter that made them feel they'd made love just the night before - and might easily do so every day for the rest of their lives from now on, if the fancy took them. It was that easy; that carefree. Only later - after they'd eaten soggy pizza from the only delivery place within 10 miles - did they sober up and remember to make the most of every look, every touch, every word. That's when they lay in each other's arms and spoke of how they'd been, what had happened to their lives for seven long months.

She had got the pediatric medicine residency without even going through an interview. He'd known she would and kissed her nose. He'd eaten only Arby's for a week to see whether he felt as lousy as Morgan Spurlock. She tutted and said she could have told him he would.

She'd moved out of Elise's place and into an apartment by herself. It was tiny and further from the hospital but at least she could be alone. He'd taken back a Ford Scorpio and rented a Ford Taurus. He felt his FBI training qualified him to take such crucial decisions. She said she felt the Arby's experiment disqualified him from making almost any decision - including whether to stand up or sit down.

Her news rolled on, real and responsible; his was the light relief - months of fear, angst and desolation reduced to dumb jokes to cheer her up.

But they never cheered her to the point where either of them forgot what they WEREN'T talking about. And whom.

Their son filled the silences between them.

XXX

They had two days. It seemed like a lifetime at first, then like a week, then - as day one rolled into day two - time accelerated in a cruel and unreasonable manner until suddenly they were sitting in her car in the same farm gateway, about to say goodbye.

He couldn't look at her; he couldn't look anywhere else. He watched her hands knot in her lap, making her little knuckles white and shiny.

'I heard his voice,' he said, ashamed to hear the break in his own. 'Twice. He called me.'

She stared at her knees, her face immobile. 'Did you go?'

He looked out of his window, even though the only thing to see was a field of ripe wheat, dull gold under the unseasonably grey sky.

'Did you go to him?'

He stared at the yellow ears of wheat with their whiskered crowns, wishing he'd said nothing, but knowing he couldn't have hidden it from her.

'Not to him. To the town. I guess it was the town, anyway. Not into the town, just near it. That's all. Not to him.'

She nodded once and caught her lip in her teeth to stop it trembling. He knew he'd done wrong; she didn't need to tell him. And she knew that he knew - that this was his confession, and his promise that his sin would not be repeated.

'Do you ever hear him?' He wanted desperately for her to say yes - for them to share that, at least, while they were apart - but she shook her head and Mulder felt her loss and disappointment like a knife in his own heart.

He looked at the storm clouds gathering over the wheat.

'He's like Sputnik,' he said.

'Sputnik?'

'The satellite.'

'I know the satellite.'

Of course she did. She'd done her dissertation on Einstein.

'You're the Earth. The centre. And I'm the moon; always traveling around you. Connected to you.'

She looked puzzled and he felt stupid; he hadn't thought this through. He struggled on anyway.

'And he's like Sputnik. Like a satellite in orbit between us. We'll never touch him but he'll always be there.'

She nodded slowly.

'We'll never touch him,' she repeated softly.

He had meant it to be a good thing but he'd blown it, of course. All he had done was remind her - as if she needed reminding - that William was beyond them. He wasn't Sputnik at all - spinning in orbit between his parents; he was Voyager - propelled from Mother Earth to spy on Jupiter and then... and then, what? And where? And how long? In a world where there was no tether, no safety net, no homing device, the questions meant nothing. William was lost to them. The fact that he was lost to them for his own good seemed irrelevant when the examined through the selfish eyes of those left behind. He might as well have burnt up on re-entry as travelled past Neptune and into cold and empty space; the effect was the same.

He might as well be dead.

Mulder flinched so hard that Scully looked at him, eyes bright with unshed tears.

'You okay?' she said.

He wanted to apologize for his clumsiness, or to repair it with tenderness or wit or just plain magic, but he knew that if he opened his mouth right now, no words were coming out. Instead he lifted his palms in a vague shrug of hopelessness. She slipped her hand into his and held it, warm and soft and healing.

'I have to go,' she said at last, as Venus appeared on the horizon of her shoulder.

He touched her fingers to his lips and got out of the car. They had learned from bitter experience to keep goodbyes short. There was nothing to say to each other now that they did not already know in their hearts.

She drove away and he raised a hand in farewell, but he could see she was steadfastly avoiding looking in her mirrors. He waited until he could no longer hear her car in the stifling summer air.

He walked back to get his car as the first big drops of rain spattered in the dust.

Then he left the quiet town to resume his own endless orbit.


End file.
